About
On October 6, 2022, Hunt Scanlon Ventures is convening hundreds of executive recruiters, PE leaders, and investment bankers at The Harvard Club of New York to examine how executive search firms are funding expansion, raising growth capital, seeking PE growth partners, and acquiring rivals to stay competitive.
If your search firm is preparing an expansion and in need of funding, seeking a private equity growth partner, considering a sale, developing an M&A strategy, setting up a continuity plan, or mapping an exit, we take a deep dive with the best experts across the field. We take you inside the latest deals to examine how investors themselves are assessing search firms – and evaluating risk.
We invite you to come meet key players in the PE community, shake hands with top executive search leaders, and discover your next move. Our formal sessions will include a continental breakfast followed by a networking break which will include mid-morning snacks. We end with a ‘champagne & nibbles’ gathering upstairs in the club where you will meet everyone one-on-one and exchange business cards!
Agenda
A Special Thanks To Our Premier Sponsors
CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
Opening Remarks
Rob Adams Moderator – Hunt Scanlon Media
Partnering with Private Equity: DSG’s Journey
Aileen Alexander Chief Executive Officer – Diversified Search GroupAs more and more private equity firms enter the executive search industry, there are incredible opportunities to differentiate and scale. In this presentation, Aileen Alexander, CEO of Diversified Search Group, will discuss the firm’s path from a privately owned company to a private equity partnership with Shoreview. This case study provides a window into a respected partnership that led to the firm’s continued growth. Aileen will share key insights from their journey, including those from the firm’s most recent acquisition of Alta Associates. She will discuss how forging partnerships with innovative, fast growing industries like cybersecurity creates exponential opportunity for growth.
AUDIENCE Q&A
How to Assess Investment Opportunities in Executive Search
Kevin McVeigh Managing Director – Credit SuisseIn this special presentation, Kevin McVeigh – a well-respected analyst and managing director at Credit Suisse – will examine how investors, and Wall Street, assess and evaluate executive search firms. His presentation will cover why the sector is ripe for investment and reveal the valuation metrics that investors look at, but more importantly, he will discuss the key topics and risks that investors focus on when evaluating investments in this sector.
AUDIENCE Q&A
Networking Break
Why Executive Search Firms are Highly Attractive for Investment
Moderator: Tim Russell Partner – The Tolan GroupAcquisitions have made huge news in the recruiting industry this past year, and for good reason. Outside investors finally caught on to the sector’s expansion potential and long growth runway ahead. Top search leaders also found ways to maximize profit which made them highly attractive to private equity firms looking for platforms they could accelerate. In this panel discussion, leading PE investment and human capital management professionals discuss why search firms are primed for investment. They will also share how small and mid-sized recruiters can best position themselves as possible acquisition targets, seek acquisitions of their own, and when mezzanine capital makes most sense.
John Beauclair
Senior Principal
New State Capital Partners
Juan Gaitan
Chief Executive Officer
TalentoHCM
Justin Pinchback
Chief Revenue Officer
ZRG Partners
Andrew Keleher
Director, Business Development
G2 Capital Advisors
AUDIENCE Q&A
How Executive Search Firms can Maximize Equity Value
Rob White Associate Director & Head of Executive Search – Tempting Talent Jack Saxton Chief Executive Officer – Tempting TalentThere’s one challenge at the forefront of most executive search business owners’ minds – hiring and retaining great talent. A great talent strategy is fundamental to maximizing equity value in executive search businesses. In this session, Jack Saxton, CEO and Rob White, head of executive search at Tempting Talent – discuss how executive search firms can maximize equity value through their unique lens as leaders of the USA’s largest search-to-search business. Their insights will uncover the major pitfalls and secrets for success that their best clients are using to maximize their growth and create long-term value through best-in-class talent attraction.
AUDIENCE Q&A
Closing Remarks
Rob Adams Moderator – Hunt Scanlon Media
VIP Champagne Reception
A steady wave of M&A activity is sweeping across the top-end executive recruiting solutions sector. In hot pursuit: private equity firms, investment banks, super boutiques, and multi-billion dollar consultancies seeking new platforms – and investment opportunities – to drive growth.
On October 6, 2022, Hunt Scanlon Ventures is convening hundreds of executive recruiters, PE leaders, and investment bankers at The Harvard Club of New York to examine how executive search firms are funding expansion, raising growth capital, seeking PE growth partners, and acquiring rivals to stay competitive in one of the hottest markets in years.
Executive search firms are today highly attractive to investors. They are expanding rapidly, diversifying into new business, and going global. Investors see a multi-billion industry at a crossroads, and in need of capital funding to accelerate growth. Human capital leaders, search firm founders, and M&A investment professionals come together to offer up surprising recommendations for anyone considering this path.
Meet key players in the PE community, shake hands with top executive search leaders, and discover your next move. Our formal sessions will include a continental breakfast followed by a networking break which will include mid-morning snacks. We end with a ‘champagne & nibbles’ gathering upstairs in the club where you will meet everyone one-on-one and exchange business cards!
‘Executive Recruiting M&A Forum: Maximizing Equity Value‘ will include presentations by Aileen Alexander, chief executive officer at Diversified Search Group; Kevin McVeigh, managing director at Credit Suisse; Tim Russell, partner at The Tolan Group; John Beauclair, managing principal at New State Capital Partners; Juan Gaitan, chief executive officer at TalentoHCM; Justin Pinchback, chief revenue officer at ZRG Partners; Andrew Keleher, director of business development at G2 Capital Advisors; and Jack Saxton, chief executive officer and Rob White, head of executive search at Tempting Talent.
Harvard Club of New York City
35 West 44th Street, NY 10036
(Cancellation notice: any passes canceled after August 19th, 2022 will not be refunded. Sponsorships non-refundable.)
Speakers
Aileen Alexander, Chief Executive Officer – Diversified Search Group
Aileen K. Alexander is the chief executive officer of Diversified Search Group, the largest woman-founded executive search firm in the world. Her responsibilities include oversight and management of the company. She previously served as vice chair, leading the firm’s global corporate practice. Aileen is a global board member of AltoPartners, a leading international alliance of executive search firms, with Diversified Search Group as the exclusive U.S. partner.
Based in Philadelphia, Aileen is a recognized leader in the executive search and talent management industry, having led C-Suite and board level searches from large, global corporations to high growth entrepreneurial companies. She leverages her expertise in technology, cybersecurity, risk management, leadership, and succession planning to enable clients to achieve their purpose and strategic priorities. Alexander is committed to ensuring client service that is creative, nimble, responsive, always centered on people first and building diverse teams that drive innovation, growth, and inclusive cultures.
Prior to joining DSG, Aileen was a managing partner at Korn Ferry where she co-launched and co-led the firm’s global cybersecurity practice. She had leadership responsibilities for Philadelphia and was also a member of the technology officers and aerospace and defense practices. She entered the industry with Heidrick & Struggles, in their Washington, DC office.
Before embarking on her career in executive search, Aileen worked in international security and defense policy at the Department of Defense and U.S. House of Representatives. She is also a military veteran, having served as a captain in the U.S. Army.
John Beauclair, Senior Principal – New State Capital Partners
John Beauclair joined New State Capital Partners in 2013 following over 18 years of experience in investment banking, private equity, and operations. John has significant experience sourcing and executing transactions across a broad range of industries, including manufacturing, specialty vehicles, agriculture, packaging, and business services.
Previously, John was a principal with Vector Capital, a 2.2B fund focused on the technology sector. Prior to Vector, John was with Gryphon Investors, where he oversaw the firm’s special situations and business development efforts. Prior to Gryphon, John worked at Sun Capital Partners, where he focused on distressed and value investment opportunities across a number of industries.
Earlier in his career, John co-founded TransOcean Capital, Inc., a middle-market private equity firm which serves investors in the MENA region. His work at TransOcean involved highly complex capital structures designed for TransOcean’s off-shore investor base.
Juan Gaitan, Founder & CEO – TalentoHCM
Juan Gaitan is founder & chief experience officer at Talento Human Capital Management holding primary responsibility for managing the growth of the firm to $100M in revenue by 2025.
Juan is obsessed with TalentoHCM’s customers success and enabling their performance through custom design and implementation of talent & organizational solutions. With two decades of human capital management & transformation experience in 30+ industries placing over 20k professionals across 500+ organizations, Juan partners with senior business leaders and human resources management teams to facilitate, align, optimize, and execute.
Prior to TalentoHCM, Juan co-founded, managed, and grew a global professional services firm delivering management consulting in human resources & information technology as well as a robust recruiting services offering in search, RPO and staffing. Prior to the global professional services firm, Juan served as managing director of an executive search & HR advisory firm and held progressive business & HR roles with an emphasis in talent management, organization design, strategy & transformation, mergers & acquisitions, change management and technology.
Justin Pinchback, Chief Revenue Officer – ZRG Partners
Justin Pinchback is Chief Revenue Officer of ZRG Partners, one of the fastest-growing mid-sized global executive search firms in the industry. His thought leadership and expertise in human capital earned him recognition when he was named to Crain’s Magazine’s list of ‘2020 Notable Leaders in HR’. He has spoken at leading conferences including Linked In’s “Talent Connect” and MIT’s “Sloan Sports Analytics” conferences. His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review and he has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School and Princeton University.
Justin most recently served as Chief Administrative Officer at Bluegrace Logistics, a $400M logistics brokerage and digital freight matching platform. While there he successfully led numerous large-scale initiatives including the organization’s COVID-19 response.
Prior to joining Bluegrace Justin focused on finance, technology and data science talent management and hiring. He designed and led Citadel’s global Datathon program, a hiring approach that focuses on ‘talent auditions’ as opposed to interviews. At Datathons professionals in the field of math, statistics, technology, and engineering compete by analyzing data to solve business and social problems.
Immediately following graduate school, Justin joined Bain & Co., where he was a strategy consultant focused on human capital, corporate restructuring, post-merger integration, and private equity. His career in talent started when he began recruiting MBAs to join the firm. Prior to Harvard and Bain, Justin worked in front line roles at top financial institutions including HSBC and Moody’s where he gained foundational training in finance, markets, and credit.
Justin has experience leading board engagements, driving post-merger integration, designing compensation programs, and leading growth hiring across role cohorts at scale. He is passionate about human capital innovation, data-driven solutions, and achieving meaningful recruiting outcomes for clients across all industry verticals.
Andrew Keleher, Director, Business Development – G2 Capital Advisors
Andrew Keleher is Director, Business Development at G2 Capital Advisors. Andrew builds fundamental relationships with clients and prospective clients in the pursuit of maximizing their long-term value and growth potential. Additionally, Andrew plays a vital role in supporting transaction execution for both buy-side and sell-side engagements.
Prior to joining G2 Capital Advisors, Andrew worked for Brighton House Associates (BHA), where he supported alternative asset managers with the development of strategic marketing initiatives to promote asset raising. Earlier in his career, Andrew was a consultant at Automatic Data Processing (ADP) in Connecticut.
Andrew earned his Bachelor of Science in Sports Management as well as a Minor in Business Administration from Springfield College.
Andrew lives in the greater Boston area with his wife Virginia and enjoys Boston sports, Peloton training as well as various outdoor activities.
Kevin McVeigh, Managing Director – Credit Suisse
Kevin D. McVeigh is a managing director in the equity research department of Credit Suisse based in New York covering business and information services. Kevin joined Credit Suisse in 2018.
Prior to joining Credit Suisse, Kevin was at Deutsche Bank where he was head of U.S. business and information services. Over the last 20+ years in research, Kevin has been consistently ranked by Institutional Investor with such accolades as Best Up and Coming Analyst for 2009, several honorable mentions, and top five ranked business services analyst in 2017. He also ranked 2nd for stock picking by StarMine in 2015 and 2017. Kevin has covered the sector for over two decades at a number of other investment firms including Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Bear Stearns. Prior to Bear Stearns, he was an audit manager at Deloitte.
Tim Russell, Partner – The Tolan Group
Tim Russell is a managing partner at The Tolan Group. Tim’s primary focus is expanding the client base in behavioral health, healthcare services, substance abuse recovery, healthcare IT, digital health and healthcare portfolio companies owned by private equity/venture capital groups.
As a veteran healthcare recruiter of 22 years, Tim brings a variety of skills to his position. Having started his recruitment career in 1997, Tim has worked for two of the nation’s leading healthcare staffing firms which culminated into his co-managing an Atlanta-based physician recruitment firm for nearly five years prior to joining the TTG team. Throughout his time in the industry, Tim has been involved in over 750 recruitment projects ranging from staff level technologists to physicians of all specialties.
Jack Saxton, Chief Executive Officer – Tempting Talent
Jack Saxton is the CEO of Tempting Talent, the largest search-to-search firm in the USA. He consultants executive search businesses about M&A, strategy and strategic talent acquisition.
With 10 years’ experience in this market, Jack has supported executive search & staffing firms grow in every major continent to scale high-performance teams.
After deciding to specialize in the U.S. market 4 years ago, Tempting Talent has placed over 300 executive search professionals in the U.S. It has also secured venture investments or equity partnerships for four executive search or staffing businesses that it has gone on to support successfully through preferred talent acquisition agreements.
Tempting Talent has a team of 18 consultants focussed on niche specialisms within the staffing and executive search industry and has offices in New York and London.
Rob White, Associate Director & Head of Executive Search – Tempting Talent
Rob White is associate director & head of executive search at Tempting Talent, one of the largest search-to-search firm in the US. He specializes in search and talent roles for executive search firms, venture funds and private equity funds. This work includes talent strategy, executive search, M&A and strategic talent acquisition.
Rob’s focus is primarily on the technology executive search industry, with a particular focus on venture and PE backed focussed search clients. He also leads the practice that has teams focused within financial services, professional services, healthcare and life sciences. He has worked with a number of start-up, high growth and established search firms to fuel their growth.
In addition to his direct work within the talent market, he has also played a role in seeding investment for recruitment & search founders. He recently secured a $3m investment for a minority owned search business focused on diversity hires within software engineering, led by a founder that won Forbes 30 under 30.
He has been in search for the past 7 years, previously conducting searches in the PR and advertising space. He currently leads a team of 8 consultants specifically focussed on the executive search market.
Sponsors
Premier Sponsors
Diversified Search is one of the top 10 retained executive search firms in North America. It has nine offices across the U.S. – in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Southern California, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. and global capabilities in 37 countries as the exclusive U.S. partner of Alto Partners. Diversified Search delivers leadership talent to its clients using a highly collaborative approach to each search assignment, viewing each one through a broad lens. This allows its consultants to consider all issues – including generational, cultural, ethnic, industry, gender and functional – to bring organizations fresh, high-potential candidates. For more information, visit www.diversifiedsearch.com.
Tempting Talent was founded in 2017 as the talent arm of Tempting Ventures, a recruitment focused venture capital firm.
It was founded to support Tempting Ventures’ mission to help build specialist recruitment entrepreneurs in new and exciting markets.
Since then, Tempting Talent has grown to become a leading recruitment-to-recruitment business in the USA, working with recruitment companies from the UK and US companies to expand in America.
The firm’s mission is to empower people to reach their potential through careers in recruitment. They aim to do this through access to the right information, opportunities, and people that maximize the chances of professional success, and by helping people find purpose and meaning in work to lead as fulfilled and happy lives as possible. For more information, visit www.temptingtalent.com.
Reception Sponsor
The Tolan Group, a top Hunt Scanlon healthcare executive search firm has been placing talent in the healthcare market for over 17 years. The firm is knowledge based with deep domain expertise in healthcare services, healthcare technology, behavioral health, payer and the SuD market.
From placing C-Level executives in leadership roles for portfolio companies to helping portcos build out the mid-management team, recruit for an entire sales, product management or delivery teams. The Tolan Group becomes an extension of its clients to convince passive candidates who are not actively looking to consider joining their client’s organization. From a single C-level search to placing individual contributors or building large teams of 10+ new hires – the firm has done it all!
The Tolan Group is nationally ranked as a Hunt Scanlon Top 50 Healthcare & Life Sciences Search Firm, a Hunt Scanlon Private Equity Recruiting Power 75 Executive Search Firm, and a Hunt Scanlon Top 60 Financial Services Search Firm in the US. For more information, visit www.thetolangroup.com.
Breakfast Sponsor
2022 marks the 30th Anniversary of Helbling & Associates, which was established to meet the recruiting needs of construction contractors and real estate developers. Its network expanded as clients began referring the executive search firm to their colleagues outside of those sectors.
Today, Helbling serves architecture, engineering, construction, and real estate development firms in addition to entities that have significant real estate assets and facilities management needs. These include the nation’s most prominent institutions of education, healthcare, and research, as well as cultural and community organizations.
Helbling’s business model is based on long-term client relationships, and its culture is focused on serving clients’ long-term interests. With a stellar reputation in its focus areas and a strong mission to Transcend the Transactional, Helbling has a solid foundation for growth. For more information, visit www.helblingsearch.com.
Lanyard Sponsor
Talento Human Capital Management provides talent and organizational solutions enabling businesses to evolve beyond tactical human resources management.
The Talento recruiting division provides customized talent acquisition solutions by aligning the right talent through an industry changing client experience model. The firm’s approach evolves organizations from traditional recruiting models into a strategic, value-added capability. For more information, visit www.talentohcm.com.
Gold Sponsor
Talento Human Capital Management provides talent and organizational solutions enabling businesses to evolve beyond tactical human resources management.
The Talento recruiting division provides customized talent acquisition solutions by aligning the right talent through an industry changing client experience model. The firm’s approach evolves organizations from traditional recruiting models into a strategic, value-added capability. For more information, visit www.talentohcm.com.
Cancellation Policy
(Cancellation notice: any passes canceled after August 19th, 2022 will not be refunded. Sponsorships non-refundable.)
Register
Thank you for your interest in attending our upcoming conference, Executive Recruiting M&A Forum: Maximizing Equity Value,’ to be held on October 6, 2022 at the Harvard Club of New York. The half-day event will begin at 8:00am with continental breakfast, a mid-day Networking break along with very exciting presentations by top professionals in the sector.
We invite you to come learn how the executive search community is reimagining how they can fund their growth and expansion plans, raise capital and prepare for an expansion or exit strategy.
Price: $850
